1/18/12 TIRED OF ENDLESS CAMPAINGING? IT IS ONLY JUST BEGINNING

ZONING APPEALS BOARD...DON, SHERMAN, HANNA, ART, HOWARD...

...MEETINGS HELD AT THE FIRE HALL

ICE IS FORMING IN EARNEST NOW

SUNSET IN THE PINES

Wednesday, 8:30 AM. Temperature 4 degrees and it has fallen a degree and a half in the past hour. wind S, calm.  The sky appears mostly clear but light, stratospheric clouds are forming and the barometer predicts snow.  It would have been a frigid walk if there had been even a breath of wind, but with the sun rising it did not seem very cold at all.  Buddy did not act cold.  Even though he is a short-haired breed, he will keep warm in cold weather if well fed.
        The City of Bayfield Zoning Appeals Board which I chair met yesterday morning, and approved an appeal from a young Bayfield businessman to waive a building code which would have kept him from fully utilizing a property in the business district which he just purchased.  It is perhaps an indication that overly-restrictive city ordinances are becoming less popular in these hard economic times.  I have found that many laws and ordinances are over-restrictive or unnecessary, often copied from other ordinances elsewhere, or initiated to solve an issue of the moment and afterwards becoming  unnecessary or intrusive.  I am convinced this happens at all levels of government, and must be continually combated or in accumulation they will strangle us.
        The movement to recall Wisconsin Governor Walker has evidently well exceeded the number of signatures needed to force a special election, which will probably take place sometime this coming summer. At present there is no Democratic opposition candidate. The recall also targets five other Republican office holders, none of which is charged with any crime or misdemeanor. 
        The recall election, which will cost over nine million dollars, will occur only several months before the regularly scheduled November, 2012 elections for all state senators and representatives, and for Congress, so the state will be in a constant political campaign all year long, after having been in full campaign mode since before the November, 2010 elections.
    Walker will have served almost one-and-a-half years of his four year term.  Only one state governor has been recalled throughout US history.  The recall campaign has been funded primarily by public union money from out of state.
        The endless political campaigns, on the national, state and even local levels, are beginning to wear a little thin.  Unending tit-for-tat political warfare is not conducive to good governance in a democratic republic.  In fact, it has resulted in little more than gridlock on almost all levels of government, and the electorate is bound to tire of it at some point. I certainly have.